


Man of Wind and Sea

by Dinkerinos



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: AU, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Ben Solo is a lonely man, Dark, F/M, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Inspired by Poetry, Lighthouse, Mentions of Drowning, Mentions of Myth & Folklore, MerMay2020, Obsession, One Shot, Rey gives him a wet hug, Short, Smutty, Supernatural Elements, aggressive sex, lighthouse au, mermaid, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:08:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24002593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dinkerinos/pseuds/Dinkerinos
Summary: He finds her floating in the freezing October waters, just at the edge of the cliffs.A storm had passed the day before, leaving a great deal of things washing up on the cliffs of his lighthouse, but he could never have expected her.-She watches him—as she always does when he comes—and he feels the rays of her sunlight begin to melt his wings. Slowly, with wax dripping from his mind, his want to escape her gaze is weighed down until he’s firmly planted on the floor and her head lays in his lap, still looking up at him.-”Home,” she whispers and he knows.”Home,” he says, knowing he would go anywhere for her.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 49
Kudos: 239





	Man of Wind and Sea

He finds her floating in the freezing October waters, just at the edge of the cliffs.

A storm had passed the day before, leaving a great deal of things washing up on the cliffs of his lighthouse, but he could never have expected her.

Wrapping her in his oilskin jacket—taking great care as he pulls her from the lapping waves—he feels his heart pound in his throat. He has no idea how long she’d been in the waters, but she is deathly cold and he fears she’d been lost before he ever found her.

Even so, he hauls her into his arms, pressing her head against his chest and hooking his arm beneath her knees—hoping the warmth of his heartbeat can seep into her—as he climbs up the cliff.

The sea beats against the cliffs, washing its cold embrace up to his knees, asking him to stop; to return her from whence she came. The wind grips his form with coaxing gusts, asking him to fall to his death and let the sea carry them to deliverance. But he defies the elements that make up his home, ascending the cliff with as large steps as he can.

The cold—ever the companion of the wind and sea—soaks him to the bone, asking him to lay down and rest; to shut his eyes like the woman in his arms and sink to the ocean’s bottom with her weight on top of his. But he defies the cold, running a frantic hand across her pale cheek, trying to rub the last of his heat into her as he pushes her wet, plastered hair away.

Above them, the lighthouse watches the wind and sea with indifference, not caring if its keeper should drown that day or another.

But he defies that apathy.

With a last, shuddering step over the rocky cliffs, he hauls her onto flat ground, his breath ragged and his lungs frostbitten.

She looks like a watery corpse with her limbs limp and her fingers tinted blue.

Crawling up the last step, he kneels by her still form and pulls her closer, putting his cheek to her lips and covering her throat with his fingers.

A faint pulse beats against his touch—so slow he barely notices it at first—but he feels no breath on his skin.

He knits his fingers together, leaning over her wet form as he pumps on her naked chest with rapt, powerful thrusts. Water runs from her mouth, down her cheeks, and he feels her crack beneath his movements, but he soldiers on for an endless span of time—only knowing by instinct that he needs to stop, to pinch her nose and cover her mouth with his, to blow life into her lungs.

Around them, the wind and sea howls, beating harder and higher against the cliffs surrounding the lighthouse. They howl for their prey, cursing the keeper who would deny them.

And when it feels as if they had already laid their claim on her—her broken ribs knocking beneath his fingers—water spurts from her lips and she jerks to the side. Coughing and coughing, her lungs draw breath yet again, trembling with exhaustion. Trembling with defiance to the elements that would have claimed her.

So he follows her to the side, leaning over her and rubbing on her exposed back, not knowing if he’s trying to help her, soothe her or calm himself.

Her eyes stare at nothing yet are wide with fear.

Once her coughing subsides, she falls limp again—unconscious yet alive—and he quickly gathers her into his arms, closing his oilskin jacket around her again.

As he hurries her toward the lighthouse, he feels her weak breaths against his throat, and he thinks to himself that he might have won.

He might have defeated the wind and sea.

-

She battles a fever for two days, and he sits by the side of the bed, helpless to do anything but watch the fire in the stove and tuck her back beneath the covers when she thrashes in her nightmares.

Her eyes rarely open and he urges her to drink water as soon as he notices. But she turns away from the tin cup in his hand, letting its contents spill over her chin just as salty tears spill from her unfocused eyes. She sobs quietly, and he doesn’t know if she’s still dreaming or not.

-

When she wakes, she sits in bed for a week.

He brings her food she doesn’t eat and water she barely drinks. He knows her ribs must hurt beyond measure, but she seems to bare it. She just sits there, wrapped in his bed sheets, staring out the only window, looking at the sea. As if the sea hadn’t tried taking her life.

He lets her, instead sleeping on the sofa during the day and spending most of his nights tending to the lighthouse—guiding ships to shore.

He asks her what her name is, and she doesn’t reply, looking at him as if he’s the strange one. He asks where she came from, and she points at the window—at the sea—and he watches a ship cross over the horizon. He asks how old she is and she takes his hand and presses it to her chest. He hesitates, thinking of her broken ribs, but she insists, and he feels her heartbeat beneath his fingers, through the fabric of the shirt she has borrowed.

So, with no answers, he continues tending to her, trying to convince her to at least eat.

Each night, the wind and sea howl, just as the day he found her. And as he sits by the great pyre of the lighthouse, watching it direct its light right to left and back again, he thinks that they are hungry wolves, crying for their lost prey.

-

After another week, he finds her one early morning—just as he comes down from the lighthouse—laying on the floor of the bedroom with an angry expression.

He rushes to her side, putting down the tray of breakfast, and carefully threads his hands under her shoulders and knees. She looks at him all the while, her hazel eyes studying his profile as he carries her back to bed. When he puts her down, she grabs his arm and he dares to meet those eyes that look at him so intently.

She tugs at him, and he lets her, falling to a knee before her and holding his hand to her jutting hip. She throws her legs over the side of the bed and plants her feet on the floor, just by his knee. He doesn’t understand what she wants, but he keeps his eyes locked with hers, unable to look away from the gaze that had been so fearful of death when he found her and now was bright with life, even if gaunt.

She puts her hands on his shoulders, steadying herself as she stands up with wobbly legs. He holds her hip as she does, feeling her muscles shake.

With his help, she tentatively walks, mostly leaning her weight against him.

Once they’ve rounded the bed twice, she sits down in bed with a tired smile and he thinks of white peonies in full bloom.

And he smiles too.

-

When she starts eating the food, she doesn’t stop.

During the day, she takes a walk, lays down in bed, then succumbs to a frenzy as she eats the food he brings her.

It’s almost comical to watch, but he can’t help but think that she’s been starving for a long time.

During the night, he sits in the lighthouse, watching the dark waters churn beneath his home.

He thinks that they are sullen, beginning to accept that they couldn’t take her.

-

A month after he found her, she’s sitting by his dinner table, clothed in his smallest shirt and his smallest pair of pants.

He tries to read last week's news paper, but he finds his gaze drifting to hers constantly.

She reaches for the paper, making him put it down flat for her to see. She leans onto the table, putting her knees on the chair and hanging her weight on her arms. Her eyes flit across the page he has spread—something about an unsinkable vessel sinking—and he thinks she might be trying to read. Soon enough, she points at the painted picture in the middle.

”Ship,” he says hoarsely, unused to hearing his own voice.

She smiles, and it shines as if it’s the moonlight in a starlit sky.

So he lets her point, and he says the words out loud for her.

-

One day, as she sits in the living room, watching the flames of the fireplace with rapt attention as if she’s seeing an exotic animal, he comes down after a long night.

Books are splayed by her feet, forming a haphazard circle around her, so he sits a small distance away from her. But she frowns, pushing the books out of her way and closes that distance.

She smiles at him and it’s like seeing the sun rise over a quiet sea.

He smiles too, feeling as if he’s becoming Icarus.

She watches him—as she always does when he comes—and he feels the rays of her sunlight begin to melt his wings. Slowly, with wax dripping from his mind, his want to escape her gaze is weighed down until he’s firmly planted on the floor and her head lays in his lap, still looking up at him.

He swallows down years of loneliness—of nights spent watching distant ships pass by, of waves breaking on the cliffs of his home while calling his name—and brushes her hair from her face. It’s soft. Softer than anything he knows.

She lets him, closing her eyes.

Soon, she’s asleep, and he watches her chest rise and fall, unable to move from his place.

-

Two months since he stopped being alone, he is returning from his Winter storage, hauling a boar he shot during the Summer.

Snow has fallen for the last two days and he’s had to stop her going out many times. So, when he sees her standing barefoot in the snow by the door, smiling brightly at him as she holds up snow, he can only sigh.

He watches her study it, wondering where she came from where there was no snow.

She takes a bite from the pile in her hand, and her eyes light up even more.

As he stands there, with a two-hundred-pound boar on a hand-carriage behind him, she bounds up to him, holding out the pile of snow in her hands. He looks at her, and she looks at him, putting the snow closer to his face.

”Eat,” she says.

So he does. He takes a bite, feeling the hair on his neck prickle from her gaze, and feels the snow melt into water before he swallows. She studies him, almost as closely as she’d studied the snow, and opens her mouth. He feels the corner of his mouth want to pull into a grin, but seeing her serious gaze, he instead copies her, letting her see how the snow has disappeared for him as well.

She comes a bit closer, and he wants to hesitate as she takes a pinch of snow, but he lets her gently put it in his mouth. He can feel her breaths against his chin and doesn’t move an inch as she watches the snow melt on his tongue. Her gaze—that had been bright with thoughts—darken, almost imperceptibly, before he closes his mouth. As he does, her lashes flutter, like she’s blinking something out of her eyes, before she looks at him.

Something in her eyes pulls at him—gripping his heart—and he almost imagines desire in the depths of her hazel eyes.

But she smiles, and it’s like the Summer sun beating down on him.

So he smiles as well, following her back to his home.

-

Christmas Eve is spent in the kitchen, as he prepares the Christmas supper.

Not a second goes by where she doesn’t stand by his side, watching him grind herbs, light the stove, boil potatoes, dry sardines, and salt the boar.

Each thing he grabs—be it a tool or food—she asks what it is.

”This is a whisk,” he says, beating eggs into a frothy mixture.

”Whisk,” she echoes.

She points to the paper wrapped fish.

”Sardines,” she says and he nods, pouring the eggs and herbs onto the ribs of the boar.

She points to the sourdough in the oven.

”Bread,” she says. He nods again, poking a fork into one of the boiling potatoes, checking the doneness.

For a moment she watches the bread before she stands up and looks at him. She points at him, her inquisitive features smoothing into something warm and homely. He raises one brow, waiting for her to say it. But she doesn’t, her hand falling to her side again.

"You know my name," he coaxes, cleaning his hands against the towel on his belt, meeting her gaze.

"Benjamin." She says it reverently—almost whispering it and it feels like a promise, the way she says it. A promise none but he can keep her to.

So he holds out his hand for her to take, and when she does—sliding her dainty fingers into his calloused palm—he tugs her to his chest and rests his hands against her back.

"I wish I knew yours," he says, staring down into the depths of her eyes. Depths that grow deeper and deeper as she holds his gaze.

"Name?" she asks, her tone low, only carrying between their bodies.

He hums, feeling her warmth seep into his bones in a way that had made him addicted since her head rested in his lap.

And he knows, as he drowns in her eyes, that he'll never survive being alone again.

"Rey," she says.

It's a strange name, but it fits, and he hides it away in his heart.

"Rey," he says.

She smiles and it's the the setting sun, painting orange and pink streaks in the sky.

-

Winter coats the sea in ice at the shores, putting it to a gentle sleep.

At night, Ben listens to the ice sing in low, splitting tones as it bends, breaks and reforms.

And he’s no longer alone when he does it.

Rey sits by his side, her eyes either watching him or the pyre that turns with the lighthouse. Despite the silence of her company, it makes his surroundings feel like the chatter of a beloved family home and his soul drinks its fill. The well that can be filled by her feels endless, and her water trickles in little by little from just her presence, and sometimes it floods when she smiles or her skin touches his. Her essence only demands acceptance in return—acceptance that he cannot understand where she is from, nor why she knows so little of the world.

He accepts without hesitation, just as she waters him without hesitation.

From the outside, it would seem strange, he knew. From the outside, it would be a young, innocent woman, giving her purity to a broken, lonely man that kept her, never wanting her to leave. But he didn’t care about the outside, because that wasn’t where she was from.

She was from the sea.

She was the breaking of waves upon his cliffs. She was the wind in his hair. She was the cold that invigorates his spirit.

So he takes her hand, and she looks at him with the light of the fire glazing over the darkness inside her eyes, and he puts her hand to his chest, knowing that the language she speaks was never one meant for words.

She smiles, wider than he’s ever seen before, and it’s the north star, guiding him home in the darkest night.

-

At dawn, they lay in bed.

He feels the world anchored under the weight of her head on his shoulder, as if it’ll slip, should she ever leave. He feels the reason why Spring comes every year in the way her breath ghosts over his chest and stomach. He feels how the sun burns through eternity from the way her body presses against his—skin to skin.

He never questioned why she wanted their clothes to come off, and he never questioned why she wanted him to lay in bed. He knew, somehow, that she spoke like that.

Contact. Touch.

So he tries to say something as he strokes the bend of her back and tucks her hair behind her ear, just like she draws shapes onto his stomach and her forehead leans against his cheek.

It feels natural. Like he was always meant to be with her.

And she takes his hand, drawing them both to look at the window and the blue beyond. She points with his hand, then turns so they face each other before she presses his hand to her chest, between the swell of her soft breasts.

”Home,” she whispers and he knows.

”Home,” he says, knowing he would go anywhere for her.

She draws closer, her thigh sliding along the length of his.

His heart hitches in his chest and his breath leaves his body as their noses touch and her eyes delve deep into his.

Pure heat shoots through him as she slots their lips together—not truly kissing, yet tasting his flesh with a gentle press.

Her eyes flutter closed, and his spirit soars with the feeling of belonging exactly there.

She draws his hand from between her breasts to instead cup the right one. She exhales a trembling breath as he rolls her pebbled nub between his fingers and she trails with her other hand over the planes of his stomach, following the pulse of his heart down the dip of his hip bone. She rests her hand there, where his cock would spring if it wasn’t imprisoned by her thighs.

He doesn’t know what to do—not really—but with the loving hums of her dulcet voice she guides him.

What he does know is that his face is red and burning with the feel of her slight writhing against him, making her knees roll against each other and her thighs massage his member. And she’s responding to his every ministration, keening, moving mindlessly, arching into his hand until she seems unable to take more and she grabs his other hand that he hadn’t known where to put, drawing it to a wetness he couldn’t possibly have prepared for.

As she holds his hand there, coaxing it to press between her thighs and slide over her wet sex—his fingers carding through her folds—her lips move over his in a moan and she hitches over the syllables of his name.

And he can barely take it, feeling his cock throb against the plush skin of her thighs.

She's using him, chasing a high that she wants him to watch, and he lets her.

He feels her entrance against his fingertips and knows; he knows that she’ll break against him if he pushes into her.

So he does.

He enters her with two fingers and she loses her voice, staring into his eyes, letting him fall deeper into her soul than he could ever climb out of. Her entire body trembles against him and he pants with desire, unable to relieve the pressure inside himself other than to let it seep into her through his slowly pumping fingers.

His name shudders over her lips and she holds his hand tighter against her center, pressing the base of his palm against the start of her sex, grinding down on him as his other hand slides over her chest, up her throat and settles by her chin as he feels the softness of her lips against his fingertips.

She arches into him, almost hiding from the fingers that spear her, yet keeping their foreheads touching and her hooded eyes locked with his.

He lets her take everything she wants from him, showing her with his stolen breath and shaking hums as his cock twitches—still caught in the press of her thighs that insistently rub together.

And when she draws his hand out of her slick core with an obscene, wet noise, pulling it down to his cock and making him close his fist around the shaft, he moans her name.

Her eyes light up with a brightness that had been long lost in the depths of her desire, and she shows him exactly how she wants him to touch himself as she raises her leg slightly and guides him to slide his full length against her slick sex.

”Come home with me,” she says in a low, reverent tone and he captures her lips in a desperate kiss, licking at the seam until she meets his tongue and he finally tastes her.

His heart is overflowing with feeling and purpose, knowing that even as she speaks his language of words, it was his understanding of hers that sent them both over the edge.

Because as he grinds against her, and she licks into his mouth, and his other hand takes hers and holds it to his racing heart, she sobs his name in a broken moan and wetness gushes over his cock as she ascends the high in erratic shakes.

He comes as he hears her call for him, coating her right thigh in warm ropes that are more plenty than he’s ever experienced alone. In fact, he doesn’t know that he can stop as she blesses his name against his own lips. She kisses him, tenderly whispering his name over and over against his skin until he's shaking from the aftershocks of his orgasm, utterly lost in the sensation of being with someone like this—with her.

The heavens open above him, telling him that he’s finally found Eden.

And once the otherworldly stars fade from his eyes and he sees her face again, she smiles, and it’s the vastness of the ocean, welcoming him.

-

Weeks of reverence finds them both adoring the other in all possible places.

By the modest, rickety dinner table, she sits in his lap and grinds them both to bliss—still dressed—dinner cold and forgotten as they share desperate, biting kisses.

Under the clockwork of the lighthouse, even as his mind howls bloody murder at him for not keeping to his schedule of rewinding the machinery as dusk breaks into night, she takes him into her hands from behind, sucking and kissing his neck until its sore—littered with stinging, red marks—and he’s come into her palm. He sees himself in lens of the guiding light later, bleeding from his lower lip and bruised on his jaw, and he thinks she’s an animal, slowly eating him alive.

On the rug in front of the open fireplace, she shows him how to lick her sex in a way that has her trembling and raking painful scores over his shoulders before she violently cums, screaming his name to the heavens as drops of blood run down his shoulders and over his chest.

In the oil room—where he had been refilling the lamp-fat—she has him pressed against the oil drum, his pants ripped in the belt-seam as she swallows his cock down her throat and makes him beg by the virtue of her name until she’s sucked his soul through his groin and he has to hold himself up by the steaming lip of the drum. And when they go to sleep, with her back pressed to his chest, he looks at the burned skin on his palms, wondering when his body will break under her grace.

Weeks turn into months, and she spends him at her every whim.

And his spirit drinks from hers, even as his body aches, bleeds and bruises.

Months turn into a near year, and the reverence has become obsession.

He has her hands pinned to the door of their home, his oilskin jacket hanging over them as he pumps into her dripping sex, holding one thigh aloft. She kisses him with abandon, spilling broken moans into his mouth as he uses all the strength he has left—after hunting the season’s last boar—to fuck into her, hearing the slap of their skin and his own panting in the dead of the night with only the moon above as their light.

She watches the waves crash on the cliffs, from the rail on the pinnacle of the lighthouse. He stands pressed against her back, planting kisses that hold his entire heart along her shoulder and neck. And as she turns to look at him, her hazel eyes darkened by the storm of her love, he knows he’ll fuck her right there, over the rail. Without words, she bends over the cold metal, drawing her dress over her hip and holding his eyes until he’s sheathed inside her, hearing thunder rumble far in the distance when he growls her name. She comes on his cock before he fills her, and she cries that he will come with her home.

It’s madness. It’s addiction. It’s love, coming from the other side of reality where only fairytales could tell of the power of the sea and how many men it had drawn into its endless depths.

And he knows.

He knows that she’ll take him for good one day.

-

After a storm in October, he finds her standing at the start of the cliffs, wrapped in a blanket that’s as soaked as the rest of her. The waves crash, sending huge mists of cold, salty water spraying everything near and he flinches with the thundering clash of rocks and sea.

He calls her name, his voice breaking with the sickening worry. But she doesn’t answer.

He jogs up to her, calling her name again, until he’s close enough to see the tremble in her frame and the pale whiteness of her skin and he feels his heart shrivel. Her skirt is slick against her skin and her feet are bare. He hesitates, seeing a standing corpse instead of the woman he knows, and just as he thinks his heart might leap from his mouth, he takes hold of her shoulders—frantic with the need to feel that she’s real.

She is painfully cold.

But as he turns her, ready to sweep her from her feet and bring her inside, dark eyes meet his and he feels his breath leave him. Her eyes, that seem completely black in the minimal light, sear desire right through his soul and he realizes that the depths he had been privy to before were but glimpses of the maw that would rise up and swallow him.

The blanket falls forgotten as she fists her hands into his jacket and pulls him down—lips meeting lips.

It’s pure hunger, the way her tongue licks into his mouth and her body presses to his—her legs forcing between his own as she uses the leverage to grind on him. He stumbles with it, feeling his heart quiver in the prospect of her lust and his head reel with trying to come to terms, but she doesn't let him. She pulls him into her, sliding her hands down his sides and over his back, and he doesn’t know how he’ll meet her need, but he’s kissing her back, desperate to be worthy.

Waves crash harder into the cliffs, and a long forgotten voice screams in his head to back away from the edge, but all he can think about is the dams breaking inside him as he lifts her writhing body and her legs lock around his hip without her lips leaving his.

It feels like more than an addiction as she tastes him, and he lets her, listening to the keen moans of her voice—feeling the power of them harden him beyond possibility.

He lets her addiction devour him. And even as he has to break from her to draw ragged breaths, she sucks painful marks on his jaw and the skin beneath his ear, as if her own breathing can be foregone in reverence to his body.

Fire churns in his blood. His knees shake with weakness in the face of her lust.

The wind and sea are roaring in his ears, promising death for his profanation of their treasure. And he knows, in the seat of his soul, that the sea made her, and he’s stolen her from it.

He feels the waves of her desire crash over him, knocking him to the ground. He falls into a puddle that should freeze him with its icy cold, yet it feels lukewarm as her hips grind into his and she steals guttural groans from his throat.

She claws his jacket open, ripping his shirt over his head before she tastes his body as the mists of the waves wash over them—soaking them even more. She licks the planes of his stomach, raking her fingers over his ribs and arms, and he’s at her complete mercy, feeling his skin break under her nails.

As she reaches for his face, grasping at his hair and pulling him to her lips, he presses her groin down harder onto his, mad with the friction of her undulating hips against the length of his clothed cock. It should be painful with the skin-tight fit of his wet clothes—as painful as the red scores she draws over his body—but it’s barely enough.

Each wave breaking over the cliffs ripples through her body and into him, and the blood that pools in his wounds roils with the water, dripping in reddish streams down his skin.

When he finally feels that he might be as wanton as her, lavishing every inch of her body as he relieves her of her shirt, she slides down his thighs and unbuttons the slodged fabric of his pants. If he’d been any less possessed by the darkness in her eyes and the pure desire of her mouth, he might’ve protested—hearing the elements trying to claim them—but he almost sobs as he springs from the tight confines of his wet pants, standing as proud in the freezing October air as he would in the soft warmth of bed.

Her eyes are locked with his, her lips parted with her panting breath, as she kneels over him—her skirt stuck to the skin of her bare thighs—with her hands pressed to his chest. She looks like the goddess of the seas, gazing down the length of her nose at him, with judgement so sure it could call for his execution and he would nod, happy to appease her.

So when she sinks down over him—with her heated core sliding along his cock—he cannot help how his eyes roll into his head nor stop the long, drawn-out groan that makes him sound like a dying man. And—

She smiles.

She smiles, and it’s the blood moon telling of the death of innocence. It’s the stormy seas, capsizing ships full of men who thought they could brave their ultimate mistress. It’s the prison of his entire being, and he knows he will never escape it.

She has her way with him, and he lets her.

He lets her do everything she wants.

-

And when she asks him to lay down at the edge of the water—on the cliffs that he found her—he doesn’t hesitate.

He smiles at her as they drift along the surface and her skin grows scales and her legs melt together, sprouting a fish’s tail.

And she smiles.

And it’s the rest of his life, drowning in her eyes.


End file.
